


coming out thing

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Brody's POV, Coming Out, Gen, POV Third Person, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, could be romantic if you squint, hhh anyway this is my first work on this website so all feedback is welcome !!!!, i just came out to my friend so i decided to use anna as means of projecting, im just getting back into the writing game and would lovet to improve :D, no schedule we post at midnight like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 16:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Brody met Anna, she went by a different name.





	coming out thing

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my first work on AO3. I wrote this a while back but decided, "What better to introduce myself to AO3 than to post an old work I barely edited?" So here I am ! Anyway I hope you enjoy.

When Brody met Anna, she went by a different name. 

Anna and Brody had grown up together, and done everything just like that — together. They were known for being as thick as thieves. Where one went, the other was sure to follow. She was the first to know about Brody’s first kiss, the first to know about his first heartbreak, to know about every insecurity he carried, every secret. 

They were background characters, in the grand scheme of it all. Nothing but background characters for the real leads of the play, but they were okay with that. They had each other, and that’s all that mattered to them.

When they reached their teens, Brody could feel her pulling back from him. He desperately clung to her as she drifted further and further away. He left her texts that went unread, phone calls that went unanswered. She was going somewhere Brody couldn’t follow, and that terrified him. 

If the walls could talk, they would whisper all the secrets of those lonely nights, where he'd find himself sitting in the dark, waiting for the phone to ring. Nights where he’d wonder if he’d been the cause of all this; if he’d done something to cause her to pull back. 

Stupid, inconsiderate, Brody. Can’t do anything right, can you? 

But the walls kept his secret, telling not a soul of just how many tears he’d let spill for her, curling into his blankets as yet another phone call went unanswered. 

 

***

 

It was October, and a few months had passed since Anna and him had had a proper conversation. Their talks were mostly filled with long stretches of silence, as they tried to grasp at any sense of normalcy. Phone calls were particularly awkward, and at this point she’d stopped replying to texts altogether. That didn’t stop him from sending them, of course. His older brother had told him to take a hint, Brody told him to go fuck himself. 

On one extremely, for lack of a better word, shitty and lonely night, following an argument with his father (what it was about, Brody couldn’t remember. Not that he much cared to), Brody’s phone rung. It startled him awake, and the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes were the annoyingly bright numbers of his bedside clock, reading 3:17am, ticking over to 3:18am as he rolled onto his back. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as his opened his flip-phone, the screen displaying the name that had been plaguing him as its owner avoided him. He had never been more relieved to be woken up so suddenly. 

On one hand, he was so happy he could cry. She’d finally reached out to him. Maybe she’d finally tell him what he’d done wrong. Maybe it wasn’t unfixable, and their friendship wouldn’t be just scraps of what it was. On the other hand, he was almost tempted to ignore her. How dare she call him (at three in the morning, no less!) after avoiding him for months? Leaving him in the dark, desperate to know what he did wrong? How dare she?

Unfortunately (fortunately?), the side of him that was desperate for answers won, and he answered the phone swiftly, a string of apologies and questions at the tip of his tongue, but the words died in his mouth as she spoke, soft and tenderly. 

"Meet me at the school stadium. It's important," She whispered, her words spoken with a light breathy sound to them. She then promptly hung up, leaving no room for questions or to argue.

And Brody once again found himself alone in the dark, with nothing but the beige walls and his thoughts for company. 

 

***

 

When he found anna, she was sitting alone on the bleachers. she wore a large, dark green hoodie that hid her thin frame -- his hoodie, he noticed. The one he had actually just spent ten minutes looking for as he rushed out the door. She rubbed her hands together and blew into them, trying to maintain any warmth she could. the recent snowfall had littered her black hair with dots of white. He stared at her for a moment, before sitting down beside her, letting out a sigh that lingered in the air as a light fog before vanishing.

He had a thousand questions on his mind. He wanted to yell at her for leaving him alone, when that was the one thing they’d promised to never do to each other. He wanted to hug her, put his hands through her dark hair (which was longer than it used to be, he realized), and tell her that he’d forgive her if she just told him why. Why did she do it? What did he do?

"You said it's important," He said instead, kicking at an empty chip bag at his feet, his shoelace untied from his earlier rush out the door. His breath still came out in small misty buffs, visible in the stadium lights and cold autumn air. 

"I did," She said flatly, leaning forward and staring up at the lights in the empty stadium. 

The silence between them was thick and heavy, and Brody wanted to rip his hair out. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead. 

"Do you remember when you met me?" She asked, still not facing him. She hadn’t looked at him once since he arrived. She just stared up and at the sky.

He let out a small laugh as he kicked the empty bag. "I certainly remember the punch in the face, yeah.” He smiled fondly at the memory, back when they were six and didn’t have so many anxieties plaguing them. She let out a noise caught somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. 

"Yeah,” She brushed her short hair out of her face, clutching the black strands in her hand. "Because you said I looked like I’d hit 'like a girl'." She threw air quotation marks around the phrase.

"Ha! You proved me wrong on that one." God, he missed this; missed her. He just wants it all back, awkward pauses and all, he doesn’t even need an explanation. As long as they can go back to the way they were, he wouldn’t care why she seemingly ghosted him.

They remained silent for a moment as he clicked his feet together, squinting up at the sky.

"I mean," She mumbled, playing with the cuff of the green hoodie -- his green hoodie -- as she stared at the ground, "You weren't entirely wrong."

He stopped clicking his feet and turned his head toward her. "What do you mean?"

"I do hit like a girl, because—"

He cut her off with a chuckle. "Nah, dude, you really don't. You almost broke my nose last time. We can fight if you —"

"Let me finish," She said, pointing a finger at him. She was hunched over herself, her knees close to her chest. She was still avoiding eye contact. "I do hit like a girl because I am. A girl, I mean."

When Brody met Anna, she went by a different name. 

 

***

 

Anna seemed happier after having told him. Happier than he’d ever seen her in a long time. She explained that she avoided him because she didn’t know how he’d react, and she thought it’d be easier this way if he reacted negatively. He threw his arms around her and held her close to his chest, and said that it was still going to be him and her against the world. 

She told her parents not too long after that, her hand in Brody’s as she sat them down on the couch, explaining it in much the same way she explained it to him. Her mother cried, her brother didn’t quite get it, and her dad said that a part of him always knew. Her mother was quick to assure her that she’d always be their child, and Anna burst into tears at that. Good tears, she clarified. Brody might’ve cried too, but that’s just another secret for the walls to hold. Good tears.

Things were different after that. Different, but the same. Legal name changes, hormones, the wardrobe. It was all so different. But it was still the same best friend that Brody had grown up knowing and loving. The same dork who stole his hoodies, elbowed him in the ribs when he made dirty jokes, and ranted about Star Wars.

Brody and Anna donated her old wardrobe and burned what couldn’t be donated. It felt good, watching her past go up in flames. She flipped off the pile of burning fabric as Brody whooped loudly, both of them giggly and slightly tipsy from the alcohol they’d stolen from his father. The clothes were new, but the ritual of stealing alcohol and goofing off was the same.

Different, but the same.

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!:)


End file.
